


The Bright Relief

by leupagus



Category: 1776 (1972)
Genre: Drunkenness, Gen, Historical, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-25
Updated: 2010-07-25
Packaged: 2017-10-10 19:34:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/103463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leupagus/pseuds/leupagus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the signing of the Declaration, Franklin challenges Jefferson to a drinking contest. The result is predictable to everyone but Jefferson.</p><p>*</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bright Relief

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lazulisong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazulisong/gifts), [screamlet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamlet/gifts), [waldorph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waldorph/gifts).



The City Tavern is infamous as a place where good money goes to make bad decisions. Lying prone on a table, the remains of a truly heroic drinking contest littered around him, Tom takes the time to reflect on his own contribution to that infamy.

The trouble, he thinks, is that by all standards of logic and sense, he should win every time. He’s thirty-three, tall and broad of shoulder, and has been drinking at a respectable pace since he was old enough to sit at the family dinner table; not only that, but he spent a good deal of time at William and Mary studying through the haze of one regrettable night out or another.

Dr. Franklin, on the other hand, is well into his eighth decade; he suffers from gout, kidney stones, and no doubt any number of diseases which make drinking inadvisable.

Yet it always seems to end like this.

“Jefferson, get _up_,” someone says. He feels something hard prodding at his shoulder.

“I can’t,” he says, or tries to. What comes out is a kind of whinging slur. He’s slumped down on the table, his face pressed against the cool surface, and if he can just stay here for the next few days, perhaps eventually his head will stop spinning in direct counterpoint to the Earth’s rotation.

“Oh, good _God_.” It’s probably Adams, although from this angle Jefferson can’t see and can hear only a little better. But no one else among his acquaintance ever sounds that exasperated. “All right, if you won’t lift yourself up, then you’ll have to accept some assistance.”

Abruptly the world tilts and Tom is sitting straight, or at least sitting back, in his chair. He blinks. “Where is everyone?”

Adams snorts. “It’s almost dawn,” he says.

Tom nods, trying to understand the connection.

“Which _means_,” Adams continues, “That everyone else left some considerable time ago.”

“But not you,” Tom points out.

“You’re the sole delegate from Virginia at the present time,” Adams says, fussing at his sleeves. He looks exhausted and a bit low-spirited, as though the resolution for independence had been defeated and not adopted a scant few days ago. “If I let you drown in a butt of Malmsey, only Providence knows what would come of it.”

Tom peers around the tavern; it is, indeed, almost empty, save for a few barmaids collecting mugs and a snoring shape in one corner. “Is that Mr. Read?”

“The one and only,” Adams replies. “Now. Up.”

“Down is more comfortable.”

“Yes, but up involves a bed, and water. And perhaps a change of clothes,” Adams adds.

This is sound reasoning, and Tom makes every effort to sort out his limbs. He is largely unsuccessful. “I think down may be safer,” he says.

“Incredible. _This_," Adams growls, "Is the genius behind the most celebrated document of our time." He kneels down to unwind Tom’s leg from that of the table.

Tom watches him, those quick hands straightening out the mess of Tom’s own body. It takes a few extra moments for the words to penetrate. “The most celebrated document of our time?” he asks, obscurely delighted. “The ink’s hardly dry.”

Adams glances up, a ready scowl on his face. “Do you think I would have defended it for three days straight if I thought it was drivel?”

“I thought it was my charm and good looks that won you over,” Tom says, leaning forward.

This elicits a long-suffering sigh as Adams climbs back to his feet and holds out a hand. “Up, Jefferson. _Now_.”

“You’re extremely demanding,” Tom says, but nevertheless takes his hand and is hauled bodily to his feet. He sways only a little, and manages to balance himself tolerably well using the table. When he turns to Adams to display this skill, however, he stumbles.

Adams grabs hold of him as he flails about, and Tom ends up leaning on Adams’s shoulder. “All right, we’ve gotten this far,” Adams says. “Now. You’ll have to do the walking part yourself.”

This seems to be asking a great deal. “Why?”

“Because I did not think to bring Franklin’s litter with me, and carrying you is beyond my abilities.”

“Did you just admit to a limitation?”

“_Move_, Jefferson.”

The sun has not yet risen, although there are signs of early-morning activity in the streets. “You know,” Tom observes, “Philadelphia smells terrible.”

“Especially trapped underneath the arm of a fellow Congressman,” Adams agrees.

“It is not my fault that you are the perfect size for a walking stick, Mr. Adams,” Tom protests.

“A _walking_\--” Adams stops all of a sudden and Tom is obliged to grab hold of the nearest solid object -- which happens to be a very solid constable.

“Ho-ho then,” the constable says, squinting up at Tom and down at Adams. “What’s this?”

“My humble apologizes,” Tom says, then frowns. That isn’t quite right.

Adams says, “We’re on our way home, Constable. Nothing to see here.”

“I think I'd best be the judge of that, young man,” the constable replies, narrowing his eyes at Adams.

Tom can feel Adams taking a deep breath and he realizes that for the next few minutes, he really ought to appear sober. “I beg your pardon,” he says, slowly and carefully. “I assure you that we are--”

“Here, wait a moment," the constable interrupts, swinging his lantern into Tom's face. "You’re that tall lad from Virginia, aren’t you?”

Adams sputters, “_That tall lad from_\--”

Tom claps his hand over Adams’s mouth. “Yes, sir,” he says. “I am.”

“Well." The constable takes a long moment. "A gentleman of Congress is allowed a certain... understanding, I suppose. Just make sure to get your friend indoors, where he can’t go around endangering the public.”

Adams, still muffled, makes a high-pitched noise and kicks at Tom’s ankle, but Tom simply nods and says, “Thank you very much, sir.”

Tom waits until the constable is safely around the corner before releasing Adams, who has turned almost purple at this point. “There was no need to bite me,” he says, examining his injured hand.

“There was a need to _breathe_,” Adams snaps as he straightens his jacket.

Tom leans against a convenient wall and says, “I am very tired. How much longer do we have to walk?”

“Your rooms should be somewhere around here,” Adams says, taking a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiping his mouth. Tom should probably be offended.

“Wake me when you’ve found them,” he says, letting his eyes shut for a moment.

“Oh good -- Jefferson! Wake up.” Adams shakes him until he opens his eyes, then points down the street with his walking stick. “I think it’s this way.”

Tom drapes his arm around Adams’s shoulder again and they set off. The sun is beginning to make itself felt, both in light and in heat; the cobblestones already seem to radiate warmth. “Terrible,” he says.

“What?”

“The cobblestones,” Tom explains.

“How were you able to speak in complete sentences to that constable, and yet you’re reduced to inane babble again now that it’s just the two of us?” Adams demands. He directs them into a familiar alley.

“I am perfectly coherent, Mr. Adams,” Tom insists, although he gets distracted by the necessity of having to figure out the stairs. “In fact, I am not nearly so incapacitated as you seem to think.”

“You couldn’t remember where you _lived_,” Adams retorts, “Much less anything requiring higher brain function than--”

“When in the course of human events,” Tom says, climbing the stairs one at a time, “It becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another--”

“_Yes_, Jefferson, I read it too,” Adams mutters from somewhere behind him. He pushes Tom aside and wrestles open the door, then shoos Tom in like some sort of recalcitrant chicken. “I even _signed_ the damn thing last night.”

“And,” Tom continues as he trips over the doorsill, “To assume among the powers of the earth--”

“The separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation, _yes_ Jefferson, I _know_, I was _there_.” Adams does not seem to have taken a breath in all that time.

But Tom refuses to let himself be distracted. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed with certain--”

“Endowed by their Creator,” Adams interrupts. 

“Oh yes,” Tom remembers. “Endowed by their Creator with certain inalib--” He stops. “Inanila--”

“This is so embarrassing,” Adams mutters.

“In,” Tom tries, and sits down on the edge of his bed. “Alien. Able. There.”

“I still say it’s _un_-alienable,” Adams says, for probably the seventeenth time since yesterday.

“Have mercy, Mr. Adams,” Tom whines, “You want me to say it again?”

The smile on Adams’s face is quick, gone before Tom can do more than note its presence. “Your shoes,” he says.

“All right,” Tom grumbles. “Un... alenbel. Damn.”

“_Shoes_, Jefferson. What in Heaven’s name makes you think that a drinking contest with Franklin is a good idea, anyway?”

“Ah,” Tom says, trying to toe off his right shoe, “Based on physical parameters, I should be able to defeat him.”

“And yet you don’t. Ever, to my knowledge.”

“It’s very troubling,” Tom admits, finally succeeding in getting his right shoe off. That seems sufficient for now, and he lets himself lie flat on the bedspread, staring up at the top of the canopy.

“Oh, good God,” Adams huffs. Tom feels a tugging on his left foot, and wriggles his suddenly-liberated toes. He raises his head slightly and opens his mouth to thank him.

“Come here,” he says instead.

Adams is frowning at the shoe in his hand, but he seems to start at Tom’s words. “What?”

“Your rooms are halfway across the city,” Tom says reasonably. “And you look exhausted.”

“Thank you,” Adams says dryly. “But I fail to see what that has to do with--” He waves Tom’s shoe vaguely toward the bed.

Tom can’t help the grin that breaks out on his face; no one alive would be able to resist Adams’s scandalized expression. “With sleeping?” he asks.

“Oh. Yes. That’s--”

“You did stay up all night.”

“But--”

“And Franklin has reported that you were a perfectly adequate bedfellow when you took Mr. Chase to New Brunswick.”

Adams waves the shoe around again. “Well, the inn was full and--”

“And this bed is more than large enough for two,” Tom assures him, then cannot prevent himself from adding, “As my wife can attest.”

Adams draws himself up, every inch the affronted gentleman. “I am not your wife,” he says.

“I am well aware,” Tom says. Adams looks even more apoplectic, and Tom rolls his eyes. “I won’t outrage your virtue, if that’s your concern.”

“It wasn’t,” Adams says, “Until just now.”

“So lie down before you fall over.”

“Oh -- very well.” Adams pats at his jacket before taking it off, which reminds Tom that he’s still wearing his. He debates the matter, but merely the idea of getting back to his feet, peeling out of the jacket, then lying down again is exhausting. So he simply lies back on the bed, listening to the sound of Adams removing his shoes.

“Do you think we’ll hang for this?”

“For almost incurring a drunk and disorderly charge by the local constabulary?” Adams asks.

Tom groans and lifts his head again, mustering up a glare. “_John_,” he says.

Adams seems to relent. “I don’t know,” he says. “Washington, God knows, is not the most brilliant tactician we could have hoped for, and it seems that all our defiance and declarations will come to nothing if we keep getting beaten in every action.”

“True,” Tom sighs. The bed jostles a bit as Adams climbs on, and he turns toward him, resting his head on his arm. “I used to sneak into my older sisters’ room at night and we’d lie talking just like this, sideways on the bed.”

“No doubt your legs didn’t drape over the side as they do now.”

“The beds were a great deal bigger, then,” Tom concedes.

“I had two younger brothers,” says Adams, “Neither of whom were much inclined to late-night conversation.”

Tom smiles, remembering Mary’s laughter -- always too loud -- and Jane’s scolding shushes, as they made up stories and gossiped about their friends and family. It is hard to believe that more than a decade has passed since Jane died, that Mary is someone’s wife now, quiet and no longer given to laughter. That Elizabeth, poor Elizabeth, has been gone for almost two years. “Do you ever wish you could return to your childhood?” he asks. “To have the world laid out so simply again?”

“Oh God, you’re a maudlin drunk,” Adams says, and Tom blinks, refocuses his gaze. Adams raises his eyebrows. “You look set to weep. Get a hold of yourself, man, this bed doesn’t double as a raft.”

In point of fact, Tom is an affectionate drunk. “Try closing your mouth _and_ your eyes, Mr. Adams,” he says, “You’ll find it helps considerably.”

Adams glowers at him, but after a moment he rolls onto his back and lets out a deep sigh. Tom smiles to himself and follows his own advice. The last thing he hears is the distant crowing of a rooster and the clanking of the street pump: the sounds of Philadelphia, waking up.


End file.
